Nightmare Ink, by Alexander B. Joy

She would have resembled an angel had she not torn off the nails of her right hand clawing at the walls of her cell.

Her fingers trailed a faint watercolor red wherever she scratched. She encircled the iron slot near the bottom of her door with slick ruddy trails that resembled script if viewed from the proper angle. Her supervisors watched her for a few moments before calling in an orderly to restrain her gently, and glove her bleeding fingers.

“Surely you won’t hold her accountable for any vandalism, Dr. Droma?” Her student’s eyebrows arched, thin and silken, barely present. “The mess will be easy to sponge off. I’ll do it myself, if need be.”

As he eyed the patient through the one-way mirror, Dr. Droma fancied that Sharve could look no kinder. His soft features, boyish but for his cleft chin, lent his concerned air a tinge of innocence. Only if he wore broad spectacles that enlarged his eyes to owly proportions could he somehow seem less imposing.

“In my opinion,” he continued, “I don’t believe she intended to cause any damage, either to herself or the facility. It seems to me as though this latest reaction is no more than a tic.”

“A tic, Mr. Sharve?” Dr. Droma placed a second check-mark beside an observation she had scribbled on her clipboard. How promising that he detected the same symptoms she did. He learned quickly; on occasion it made her marvel. “Do go on, if you will.”

“Yes. As I said, a nervous tic, likely a result of her acute sleep deprivation. For all we know, she isn’t even aware she’s doing it. See how readily she lets the orderly slip on her gloves? The patient appears so docile, I can scarcely conceive of any malice or destructive intent in her. It must be the insomnia at work.”

The cell door clicked shut as the orderly departed the cell. A slight squeal, as burgeoning rust will make, cried throughout the stone chamber. After a hiss of steam, the locking mechanism fired back into place with a strident clang. The patient stared at her gloved hands. On her right, the fingertips reddened, as if painted with nail polish. The patient then seated herself on her mattress in the corner, quietly regarding the viscid redness that soaked her cotton gloves.

“You may well be correct, Mr. Sharve,” said the doctor. She watched his cheek, waiting for the tiny dimple that presaged his smile. “It would appear as though she recognizes her injury, and I imagine she is aware of what caused it.”

“I should hope, Dr. Droma,” Sharve replied. “Ms. Reed has proven so responsive – dare I say receptive? – to our questions, that any sudden lapse in judgment would be cause for alarm.”

“Perhaps you need not worry,” said Dr. Droma. She searched again for the dimple; it soon appeared. “Although I would caution you not to identify her by name. Nothing good can come of an attachment to one’s patients.”

Attachment to one’s patients, echoed her voice in her head. Is anybody else fair game, then? Subtext, subtext. Careful, now. He’s clever, as you’re aware.

“Yes, Doctor,” her pupil conceded. His chin drooped almost imperceptibly, and she wished his eyes had not broken from hers. “I shall be more mindful of it in the future.”

“Capital, Mr. Sharve.” A few seconds after, she added, “It is no reason to condemn yourself, however. We have all been tempted to treat our patients as friends.”

“Were you, during your first cases?” asked Sharve. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Once or twice,” she said. A rogue lock of hair dangled over her brow and into her eye. She detected a white streak among her normal brown, and brushed the lock aside, striving to mask her chagrin. “There’s nothing criminal in trying to connect with your patients, Mr. Sharve, but there is a great deal that is foolish. A connection impedes your ability to observe with detachment, to assess their condition coolly and objectively. All the textbook reasons you must have learned years ago.”

“Yes, quite.”

“I meant no insult by that, Mr. Sharve.”

“None taken, Doctor.”

“But you’re terse. One would think you are cross.”

“Certainly not cross, Dr. Droma,” he said, and his gaze narrowed upon the patient. “Not cross in the least. Preoccupied, perhaps, but nothing further.”

“Oh?” She lowered her half-moon spectacles down the bridge of her nose, peering over the crests of the lenses. “Might I enquire?”

“It’s nothing.” He regarded her from the corner of his eyes, which seemed to elongate his profile in a most becoming manner. Did he know how effective that glance could be? “Forget I mentioned anything.”

“I should be so lucky, Mr. Sharve. After all my training, it would be remiss of me to let slip the slightest indicator of distress.”

“Distress, Doctor? Do I truly look bothered enough to merit distress?”

“Simply the jargon, Mr. Sharve. As well you know. Do go on, if you will.”

“As I said, Doctor, it’s nothing. Merely a research matter.”

“Fascinating,” she prompted. She rapped her pencil against the clipboard. When he did not respond, she continued, “Come, now. Do you trust me so little that you won’t tell me about your research? I will not steal your idea.”

“Rest assured, Dr. Droma, you’ve done nothing to hint that you would rob me of my intellectual property.”

“Well?”

The patient had wandered away from her mattress, and stood before the one-way mirror. She combed her fingers through her hair. Subtle red streaks blended into her flowing blonde. Dark pouches collected beneath the patient’s eyes like congealing ink. Sharve turned to monitor the girl, and to Dr. Droma’s surprise, the telltale dimple sunk into his cheek. Well, research indeed! But perhaps her worries were unwarranted; she felt Sharve far too bright to lose himself in, or over, Ms. Reed.

The patient, she corrected herself, the patient.

“I haven’t any research into it yet,” said Sharve, “but I believe I have concocted a new form of therapy, specifically for nightmares.”

“Have you now?”

“It’s only a theory so far,” he conceded, “but I think I may be on to something with it.” He gave her that sideways glance of his, and she warmed. “Right now, I call it scriptotherapy.”

“Interesting,” said Dr. Droma. “Therapy through script.”

“Yes,” said Sharve, and his dimple reappeared. “Or, more accurately, through the writing of script. We don’t present the patient with text that tells them how to be well. Instead, we have them write it for us.”

“Do go on,” she pressed, brushing aside another loose lock. “If you will.”

“Certainly, Dr. Droma. As I said, this therapy is designed with nightmare victims in mind.” His eyes strayed back to the halcyon girl behind the glass. “Ms. Reed, for instance. Here we have a patient utterly incapacitated by chronic nightmares – vivid enough to cut deep into her memory, horrifying enough to dissuade her from sleeping. What a vicious cycle it must become! The memory of the nightmare burns sharply, lingering like a daguerreotype in her subconscious, and as her lack of sleep breaks down her sense of reality, the image comes to the fore, consuming her waking world as well as her sleeping one. What’s more, the memory impresses itself so thoroughly that her mind is certain to resurrect it during sleep, thereby ensuring that the same nightmares will recur.”

“That does seem to be the nature of the beast,” said Dr. Droma.

“Quite. It would appear, then, that the key to the nightmares lies not in their contents, as we have been targeting, but rather in the patient’s memory of them. What if we reorient ourselves, and pursue her memory of the nightmare, rather than the memory that caused that nightmare in the first place?”

“A truly novel idea, Mr. Sharve. My compliments.” Brilliant flashes like these, these sudden sparks, were what made him gleam. She wondered how he worked on the inside, whether that mind of his gushed like a jet of flame, each scintillation its own brilliant universe. “How do you propose we go about doing it?”

“Through script, Doctor!” He faced her at last, and his wide eyes glimmered, unless it were hers reflected in his. “I have a theory that memory is a process, that we rebuild our memories from little snippets of recalled data. For example, I don’t remember my fifth birthday per se, but I construct a memory of it from the flavor of cake I recall eating, and the sound of gifts unwrapped, and the like. If I am correct, nightmares must function in a similar capacity. They don’t spontaneously appear, but rather they are constructed by the sleeping brain. If we can alter what the brain remembers, we will alter the dreams it builds.”

“Through script, we’ll do this?”

“Exactly! I suggest that we have the patient write down the details of her initial nightmare on a piece of paper, which we keep for our records. We have her recite what she’s written, and ask her questions about her writing so that it sticks in her mind. We do the same come the next day, except that we ask her to change a few things about the nightmare here and there, lessening their intensity. When we question her, we will do so regarding her new nightmare – the one with the less frightening details. These lesser details will be the ones that her brain retains, and consequently, they will be the details from which her brain constructs her nightmare.”

“Ah. A nightmare less potent than before.”

“Yes, yes! I knew you’d understand!” Sharve beamed. “Don’t tell Dr. Hetchings, but this is why I enjoy your lessons more than his. You’ll actually listen, rather than giving a perfunctory nod and massaging your mustache like you’re deep in thought. Not that you have a mustache, mind you! I beg your pardon.”

She resisted the urge to cover her upper lip. Instead, she raised her clipboard, as if she were scrutinizing her notes. Dr. Droma jotted something down to perpetuate the illusion.

“Not at all, Mr. Sharve. Do go on.”

“Yes, yes. As I said, we change the nightmare ever so slightly. Afterward, the process repeats. Within a week, she’ll have written her nightmare into a much less terrifying, much less troublesome version of itself – and it will be this watered-down version whose details she recalls. Therefore, the nightmare her mind builds will be proportionally less. If we continue for, say, a month, we could even transform her nightmares into pleasant dreams.”

“It is as though we revise the patient’s history,” the doctor murmured.

“Revise?” Sharve raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I would not go so far as to say that, Doctor. We don’t revise history. We repair it. We improve it.”

“I see,” said Dr. Droma. She stood in awe, worrying that any word might make her seem foolish, or betray the sudden inadequacy she felt in comparison to her student. She could not recall having Sharve’s innovation at any point in her career, much less at his age. Were she less fond of him she would surely be envious. “Scriptotherapy, you call it.”

“Well,” said Sharve, “that’s what I will call it, if ever I have the opportunity to test it first. It’s nothing but an idea for the time being, and at that, a rather vague one.”

A sound of stifled sobs came from behind the mirror. The two supervisors turned to see the patient lower her face into her open palms. Sharve laid a hand on the glass. When the girl raised her head to breathe more easily, a dab of fingertip blood clung to her cheek, like a child’s attempt at rouge.

“The Board won’t allow me to administer experimental therapies before I earn my medical degree,” Sharve sighed, “and I can’t use unknowing or unwilling subjects when I conduct my dissertation.” He paused. “As well you know.”

“Indeed,” said Dr. Droma. “I do not imagine her mother will grant you permission, either. We could barely convince the woman that the girl needed treatment. Poor thing had almost to leap off her roof before Mrs. Reed would turn her over to us.”

“It kills me to think I could have a cure for Ms. Reed . . . ”

“The patient, Mr. Sharve.”

“ . . . The patient, right here and ready, and not be able to give it to her. How many years until I’m licensed? It will be that much longer she suffers.”

The girl hid her face in her gloved hands again, while Dr. Droma and Sharve observed her in silence. Lest he think she were planning to comment, the doctor scribbled on her clipboard, the metal nub of her fountain pen grinding out the quiet.

“I doubt Dr. Hetchings would be willing to try it for me.” The hand he placed on the mirror had crumpled into a fist. “If he did, he’d probably steal my theory for himself.” He gave the doctor his sideways glance. “If I told him.”

“Does Dr. Hetchings have a suitable test subject?” asked Dr. Droma, despite herself.

“I am not entirely sure,” Sharve admitted. “Ours, though, is a perfect candidate.”

“So she is,” said Dr. Droma.

He trusts you, she thought. He trusts you, and he is all but begging you for the favor of a lifetime. Think of what he will owe you. Think of what his gratitude might mean. She allowed herself an inward smirk, but soon dismissed it. No, perhaps not that much. But it would be a start. Not to mention the credit you will receive if he is right. No, not if, not with Sharve. When. When he is right.

“In my professional opinion,” said Dr. Droma, “yours sounds like a tenable theory.”

“Do you truly think so, Dr. Droma?”

“I do.”

“Then can we administer it to Ms. Reed? Er, the patient?”

“It could be arranged,” she replied. “I must be the one to spearhead it, and as such, it would appear to be my idea throughout the process. However, once we publish the findings, I could accredit you. It could apply toward the dissertation.”

“You mean it, Doctor?”

The dimple’s recurrence belied his question; it seemed to Dr. Droma that he already knew her answer.

“I am not one to jest, Mr. Sharve, as well you know. It is quite possible a new regimen would work to the patient’s favor. Our present procedure does not seem to have done enough, if it has done anything.”

For the briefest of moments, Dr. Droma fancied that the patient in the cell peered directly at them, but soon remembered that it was only a mirror the girl saw. She had discovered the red mark upon her face, and attempted to wipe it away, only to smear more blood on her cheek. If the ritual upset her, Dr. Droma would have summoned an orderly to obscure the mirror or replace her glove; as it stood, the patient appeared enraptured, painting herself with a ruddiness never produced by her pallid skin.

“We can begin tomorrow morning,” said Dr. Droma. “We ought not stray from her routine this late into the day. Patients find a certain comfort in having a schedule.”

“Of course, Doctor. Begin at your leisure.”

“Tomorrow morning, Mr. Sharve.” She narrowed her eyes. “And I shall treat your proposal with anything but leisure. I cannot justly have a cavalier attitude concerning my patients. Your procedure will be monitored closely, lest anything go awry.”

“I’d expect nothing less from you, Dr. Droma. Thank you kindly.”

His countenance radiant, Sharve eyed the girl, and Dr. Droma felt in danger of wincing. She pushed her spectacles back against the bridge of her nose, and resumed scribbling notes on her clipboard. She offered him a professional courtesy, that was it, nothing more. He would think no more about it, and she would give him no cause to do so. After all, she thought, it was best not to deviate from the routine – at least for now.

 

* * *

 

“You ready to see her, Doc?”

The orderly’s head peered around the half-open door. Seated at a long table, Dr. Droma had finished drawing ink into her fountain pen, but had spilled some in the process, staining her fingertips black. She hid her darkened hand beneath the table the moment she heard the orderly’s deep bass voice.

“Yes, I am. Please bring her in, if you will.”

The head disappeared into the other room, but soon the whole orderly returned. In his strong right hand he held Dr. Droma’s patient by the arm, and led her into the room as one would escort a lady to a promenade. She let herself be guided to the chair opposite the doctor. The orderly pressed her softly by the shoulders, and the girl sat down.

“Thank you, Johnny,” said Dr. Droma. “That will be all.”

The door clicked shut behind him, and the two women were left alone together in the clean white room. Dr. Droma saw her reflection bathed in the glow of the bright gaslight overhead as she glanced at the one-way mirror. Only the orderly would be watching, same as always. Yet she felt nervous. The doctor smiled at her patient.

“And how are you this morning, Priscilla?”

“Fine, I suppose.” She interlaced her gloved fingers. They were stark white. Perhaps the patient felt better today, or perhaps was too exhausted to fuel another outburst like yesterday’s. “I said you could call me Cil, remember?”

“I am a professional, Ms. Reed,” said Dr. Droma, “and I shall treat you with all the respect that a professional offers another adult. I will call you ‘Cil’ if you insist, but my instincts will always direct me toward more civil means of address.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine, too, I suppose.”

“Are you feeling rested, Pris . . . Cil?”

“No less than usual, Doctor.”

“So that means no,” said Dr. Droma, jotting a note. “Might I enquire as to why you are not?”

“Because I couldn’t sleep,” Cil said, and tapped her white thumbs against one another. “What happened to your fingers? Are those bruises? You’d be so lucky – one of those steamlock doors can slam shut with enough force to yank off anything you could catch in it.”

“Indeed,” said the doctor. “I recall you were knowledgeable of technical matters like those. If memory serves, was that not the reason why you attempted to place your neck in the doorway the first week of your stay here?”

“Might have been,” said the girl. “It would’ve been one way to cure me. Let’s see the nightmares try to slip in when there’s no head left for them!”

“Ms. Reed, let us not be so morbid.”

“Well? Are those bruises?”

“No,” she said, and in a flush of shame hid her stained hand beneath the table. “They are not bruises.”

“What are they, then?”

“Please, Ms. Reed, I am supposed to conduct this interview. I believe you have left me with one unanswered question.”

“Only one? Lucky again! Most of us have millions of questions that nobody answers.”

“I have told you why you are here, Pris . . . Cil. We are trying to cure you of those awful nightmares that plague you every night.”

“I know that. I still have other questions. You probably couldn’t answer them even if you wanted to.” She folded her thumbs into her palms, making a tight two-handed fist. The doctor prepared for violence, but then the patient said, “Like where and why my father died.”

“Do go on,” said Dr. Droma, as she readied her pen. “If you will. It was in the Crimea, was it not?”

“Yes, the Crimea,” said the girl, “but the army won’t tell my mother and I where in the Crimea. Or how he died.” She paused. “If they told us the where we could guess the how. And the why.”

“I am certain that Colonel Reed died a hero,” said Dr. Droma.

“As am I,” said Cil. She chuckled humorlessly. “Do you know what my father’s job was? Supply officer! A glorified quartermaster with the authority to command units. It would have been quite improbable for him to have seen combat.”

“What is it you are thinking?”

“I don’t even know what to think. There are too many possibilities. Maybe it was suicide. I mean, I’ve tried it. Maybe the impulse is hereditary. But then there must have been something that prompted him, if he tried to kill himself. And that sets me wondering, too.”

“Do you believe that? That he committed suicide?”

“Not on most days.” The girl spread her palms across the table like a medium at a séance. “Sometimes I have visions of my father half-buried in snow. He’s surrounded on all sides by walls of stone. Like a fortress. But then I notice how the blue of his uniform is wet and dark around his chest, and I realize he’s all bloodied, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like he’s safe where he is, but rather trapped in a breached fortress. Then the snow whips up, so heavy that my field of vision goes positively dark with whiteness, and my father is swallowed in it, and he doesn’t even scream. Maybe he can’t.”

Dr. Droma’s hand began to cramp from scribbling furiously at her pad.

“Would you stop that!” Cil exploded. “My father doesn’t need another pen like yours falsifying his story! He deserves the truth! More than the newspapers ever gave Lord Raglan or the rest of the army. Look! Look! Your hands are black with corruption, blackened from the lies you write!”

“Calm yourself, Cil,” said Dr. Droma. She set her pen down an arm’s length in front of her, then furtively slid her stained hand between her knees. “I have written nothing about your father. It is not my place. Only notes concerning your treatment are on this pad. Nothing more.”

“Let me see them, then.”

“Lamentably, I cannot do that. It would compromise the efficacy of our technique.”

Cil remained silent.

“Let us return to this vision of yours. Is this the one that keeps you awake every night?”

“No. I had this vision long before the nightmare started.” She paused. “My nightmare is far worse.”

“I see.”

“Did you want to discuss that, too?”

“No. At least not yet. First, I have a present for you.” The doctor stood, and rapped gently on the mirror. “Johnny, would you mind?”

In a few seconds, the orderly entered, carrying in his large hands a gaudy diary, bound in cheap gray leather and embroidered with floral patterns. He placed the diary on the table, and politely left the room. Dr. Droma saw the girl’s upper lip curl, and she suppressed a smile.

“Well? What do you think of it, Ms. Reed?”

“To be frank, Doctor, I think it a hideous excuse for a book.”

“Truly?” Dr. Droma fought a smirk. No emotion now, she told herself. The routine is discipline. Let us not deviate too heavily. “Is it the kind of book you might like to . . . destroy?”

“What?”

“If I were to give you the opportunity to destroy this diary – shred it, burn it, what have you – would you like to do it?”

The girl lifted the book. She thumbed its blank, coarse pages with some distaste. “I don’t know,” she said, returning it to the table. “Maybe.”

“Well, I will let you. I ask only one thing in return.”

“And that is?”

“I want you to write in that diary your nightmare. Record every detail you can remember. Especially the ones you find most frightening. But nothing is too minute. Write it all.”

“Am I allowed a pen?” asked the girl, her eyes darting from the one on the table to her gloved hands and wrists.

“If you remain supervised,” said the doctor, tracking the girl’s line of sight, “and only if you remain supervised, I see no harm in it. I would like to see your account written by tonight, if you will. Would you prefer to begin here, or in your room?”

“My room is fine,” said Cil.

“As you wish, Priscilla. Johnny!”

“It was Kars,” the girl whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Kars. I think that’s where my father died.”

“You must forgive me, Ms. Reed, but I am unfamiliar with the place.”

“So isn’t everybody. It’s a nightmare the whole country has woken from. Or else they’re all still asleep, and haven’t awakened unto it. I wish they would. I think it’s irresponsible to forget.”

The orderly arrived. He waited for the girl to pick up the diary, then led her out of the room. Dr. Droma hovered over her notes. She licked her thumb, and tried to scrub the ink off her soiled fingers.

 

* * *

Small wonder the girl stays up all night, Dr. Droma thought. I would also take my chances living a life without sleep than living a life where her dreams plagued me every night. But what an imagination she has! There is a terrible genius behind this vision. It is practically art. Although I can scarcely conceive of an artwork not meant to be beautiful. And these beastly nightmares are not beautiful. Great – in the same fashion as the Great London Fire. Then again, there may be something beautiful in greatness.

Her fingers began to tense up, and Dr. Droma dropped her pen. She massaged her ailing hand, continuing to pore over her notes. Priscilla Reed’s tight, manic letters dug into the page like burrowing mites. It was as though the girl were in a hurry to disgorge them, but the act was cathartic only in the sense of coughing up something. Dr. Droma had spent the evening at home, copying the girl’s account word for word into one of her case notebooks. Her efforts served two functions: first, she could ensure a thorough reading of the girl’s diary; second, she preserved a copy of the account for posterity’s sake once she allowed her patient to incinerate the original document.

The work was far from complete. By the doctor’s estimate, seven more densely-packed pages remained. She felt she had been at the task for hours; moreover, she could not shake the feeling that she had finished the job already, and that these notes were a second or even third set. Yet that was the nature of psychotherapy: to imagine that one has made progress, or to suspect that one has done the same thing time and time again. Early into her career, the feeling infuriated her. Now it served as reassurance that she was, in fact, experienced. You have done all this before, she would sometimes tell herself. It is old hat because it all comes naturally to you.

All but the scriptotherapy. Seems like such an obvious route. Probably that is the reason why it will work – because it seems so apparent, so conducive to recovery. Why did you not think of it? Now, now, it says nothing against you that you failed to come up with it first. It is a testament to Mr. Sharve’s mind that he beat you to it. You will at least be remembered as his teacher. If not more. But how, how? And when? And why? Why not Dr. Hetchings when you were both students? Did he not fancy you? You are much less young now. Not old yet, but not young. Charitably a lady, neither young nor old. And you see how he regards Cil – the patient. She cannot be more than a year his junior. Oh, but do not think this way! You never have before, have you? Perhaps because these thoughts, these attachments, do not come naturally to you. But then, if it they do not come from you, from whence do they?

Dr. Droma pillowed her head in her arms. She could take no more tonight. She promised herself that she would finish the transcription in the morning. After massaging her temples, she rose from her old water-stained writing desk.

Then she froze where she stood.

Gone were the furnishings of her comfortable study – no whistling brass clock to tell the hour of the night, no books cramming the shelves, and for that matter no shelves at all. Even the run-down writing desk had vanished. She found herself in a long, cold corridor where the light shone blue. Soot stains scarred the walls, as if a tremendous fire had torn through the place years ago. Before her she saw nothing but the endless corridor, trailing off to infinity where the blue light and her tall shadow tethered to her shoes could not follow. She shivered.

As she peered into the distance, there came a thunderous crash from behind her. She ducked in time to witness a twisted hunk of rusted metal sail overhead, and slam scraping into the ground. Hulking slabs of stone followed, shattering into pieces as they landed. She threw herself onto her stomach, desperate to avoid the onslaught of debris. As the wreckage piled higher, she could not help but liken it to a derailed locomotive, which she sorely wished to reassemble, if only to bring the havoc to an end.

A flaming crate spiraled down and burst into smoldering splinters beside her head, and she screamed. If she scrambled to her feet she would surely die from being struck, but if she lay there, she would likely be crushed. Terror engulfed her like the ocean swallowing a hobbled ship. She did not know what to do exactly, although some part of her implored her not to turn around, not to witness this chaos of destruction as it occurred.

A gigantic clock hand, heated to a liquid, splashed over her outstretched arms. She yelped as the searing metal dissolved her skin, leaving her skeletal hands to claw at the air. She screamed until her lungs were on the brink of collapse.

Until her veins caved in.

Until she awoke, still screaming, hunched over her soiled writing-desk.

Still seized with panic, she inspected each of her hands. Was that steam she glimpsed rising from them? They stung as she flexed her fingers, but perhaps it was only muscle tension. She surveyed the room to find all her familiar furniture intact. A complete set of copied notes buried the surface of her desk.

So she had finished the job, she realized. She must have nodded off before packing them away. She tried to smile, but her facial muscles would not comply. Instead she managed an uneasy smirk.

She set to gathering her notes. Her eyes idly scanned the pages, and she stopped short. How closely Priscilla’s details corresponded to her own dream! The only real difference was the protagonist of each nightmare.

“Poor girl,” she muttered. “What a fright she has been up against.”

 

* * *

“Dr. Droma? What is your opinion? Doctor?”

She blinked her leaden eyelids in exhaustion. It had been a terribly long night. Her dream had occupied all of ten minutes – not nearly enough for a full night’s rest – and she passed the time until dawn doing anything other than sleeping. Either her mind or her body, both tight coils of nervous energy, would not allow her to sleep. Frankly, she had no qualms with that; one glimpse of that cold blue corridor was enough for one evening. She spent the hours before sunrise reading and rereading her patient’s diary. By now she imagined she could recite it verbatim.

Of course, come daybreak, her vigor melted away, leaving her no-longer-youthful body to contend with the effects of a decidedly juvenile night. She could barely keep her eyes open, despite having her patient inches away behind a pane of glass. Certainly Sharve had noticed by now.

“Well, Doctor? What’s your stance?”

“Pardon, Mr. Sharve?”

“Your stance. Your opinion on whether or not to allow Ms. Reed access to her previous writings.”

“The patient, Mr. Sharve,” she said, alert for a moment. “And I am disinclined to grant her any further looks at what she has penned for us.”

“Are you quite alright, Dr. Droma? The bags beneath your eyes are darker than usual.” At that, Sharve froze. “Er, I mean, it’s unusual to see dark bags . . . No, I . . . That is . . .”

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Sharve,” said the doctor, wishing her lenses would cloud black as jet and hide whatever showed beneath them. “A sleepless night. Nothing of note.”

“My sympathies, Doctor.”

“Yes. Well. I am of the opinion that the patient – the patient, Mr. Sharve – be forbidden from seeing her earlier diary entries. I believe I have a most therapeutic way of breaking the news to her.”

“Dare I enquire?”

“Indeed, Mr. Sharve. You shall even see firsthand, once our standard appointment time with the patient arrives.”

“Yes,” said Sharve, “her routine.”

“Always, Mr. Sharve. The order of a structured day may provide the best defense for our patients against their private mental chaos.”

He stood in silence, watching the girl through the one-way mirror. To her surprise, she found it unbearable. It had to come to an end.

“Hand me the diary, if you will.”

Sharve lifted the book in one hand.

“Anything particularly interesting about the dreams?” he asked, passing her the diary. “I must admit I’m curious.”

“Better that you do not read it.” She snatched it away, and Sharve’s outstretched arm recoiled as if it had been struck. “You are testing a method first and foremost, lest you forget. I worry that ancillary readings would . . . would only distract from that purpose.”

“Of course,” said Sharve. “That hadn’t even occurred to me! This is why you’re the professional, Dr. Droma.”

“Yes. Well. Prepare your notes, Mr. Sharve. I will go administer the next step of the treatment. Johnny! The door, if you will.”

The girl lay on her back atop her mattress, threading a piece of colored yarn between her fingers and pulling it into various patterns. She crumpled her latest design in her palms as the doctor approached. When Dr. Droma flashed the diary, she sat bolt upright.

“What did you think?” asked the girl. “Did you like it?”

“To speak of likes and dislikes is an improper way to assess your writing. I will say that it intrigued me. In a strictly professional sense.”

“I suppose that’s the most I could have hoped for.”

“And how do you feel today, Ms. Reed?”

“Fresh as a daisy,” the girl said, her head lowered either in fatigue or in insolence.

“You must pardon my saying so, Ms. Reed, but you do not look it.”

“Neither do you. Have you been up all night, too?”

“Priscilla, please recall that I am not the subject. We will refrain from scrutinizing me. Are you truly feeling well?”

“Define well.”

“Fit enough to write for me?”

“For you, Doctor?” Dr. Droma thought she saw an acidic smile splash across the girl’s face. “For you, I’m well enough to do most anything.”

“Good, good.” The doctor must have imagined the acidity. The girl seemed pleasant enough. “Then I am going to ask you to write for me a full account of your nightmare.”

“Again? I already did that!”

“You did. Now we are going to make it better.” Dr. Droma allowed herself a mischievous glance at the one-way mirror, where she imagined Sharve were standing. “Go ahead and open up the diary to the pages you wrote.”

As the girl obeyed, Dr. Droma drew from her pocket a small handful of matches.

“Good, Ms. Reed. What do you think of those pages?”

“They’re all rough and coarse and nasty.”

“Yes. But what of the content?”

“It’s a nightmare.” The girl looked the doctor in the eye. “We want it to disappear.”

“We?” The doctor panicked. How could the girl have known?

“Well, you want it to go away, too, don’t you? To cure me?”

“Yes. Well. We shall do that, then.” She took a deep breath to regain her composure. “We shall do that. Tear out the pages.”

“Seriously?”

“At your leisure, Ms. Reed.”

One by one, the girl removed the leaves, piling them on the hewn stone table beside her like a stack of unwanted laundry.

“Excellent. Now.” The doctor struck a match. “Burn them.”

“Here?”

“Here. I must see it happen with my own eyes. I have to see them burnt.” The doctor checked herself. “To ensure that they are properly disposed of, that is.”

The girl accepted the proffered match. She held it to the corner of a page she pinched between two fingers. The paper ignited, and she dropped it on the pile. Soon the other leaves caught fire. They dried to cinders atop the table. Dr. Droma stared at the remains.

“Doctor? Now what?”

“Now resume writing your account, Ms. Reed. Dictate to me as you go, if you will.”

Dr. Droma opened her notebook, in which she had transcribed Priscilla’s words.

“I will correct any discrepancies as they appear,” said the doctor.

She could picture Sharve smiling his dimpled smile in admiration of her ploy.

 

* * *

Dr. Droma had left the sanatorium much later than she usually did. A gentle snowfall sugared the glowing streetlights as she walked toward home. The road looked abandoned, and the doctor thought that perhaps she had worked a bit too hard for the day.

She had made absolutely sure not to copy the new notes alone. First she had Sharve linger about, but dismissed him despite wanting him to stay all night with her. Then she kept an orderly around for company until she had transferred the entirety of the girl’s frenetic writings. She could see large, cancerous blots where she stopped the girl short and forced her to make corrections.

“No, that is not how it happened,” she remembered telling her patient. “The corridor was neither cold nor dimly lit.” She improvised a better, less intimidating setting. “You wrote last time that it was warm, and almost sunny in its brightness.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Yes. Well. I expected as much. Your subconscious insists on making your visions worse and worse. I am here to correct that. We must not let your imagination reign unchecked.”

Somewhere in those tumid blots lay the germ of the cure, Dr. Droma thought. We are scribbling toward a brighter future, one revision, one elision at a time.

“The thing behind me is always trying to make me turn around,” the girl had said, “but I won’t let it. I resist. I feel I have to resist. It’s as if I’ll be cut to ribbons if I look at whatever’s behind me.”

Dr. Droma had not yet devised a way to amend that detail. It was too salient. Too memorable, too easily rediscovered if it were changed. It would have to wait. She would save it for last. She shivered at the thought of it all the same.

The snow began to fall more heavily, and she hugged her coat around her shoulders. It is worth the effort, she reminded herself. Worth the girl’s recovery. Worth what he will owe you. A more promising tomorrow for us all.

The streetlight she passed blew out with a whoosh. She paid it no heed until the entire street fizzled into darkness, leaving her awash in a cold blue glow. Her pulse began to race.

“No!” she cried. “Not again!”

She shrieked as the entire world seemed to collapse behind her, only to be strewn in ruins in her path. Lamp-posts bent like broken limbs rained down upon the street. Windows plucked from their panes broke on the ground, their slivers piercing the soft mounds of snow piled on the walkway. A carriage without a horse split into two jagged pieces. Again and again she strove to convince herself that the sights were merely hallucinations, but to no avail. The world burnt! All was to be pulverized!

A viscous black tentacle shot over her shoulder, and wrapped about her arm with a thick liquid smack. It tugged hard, coercing her to turn around. The doctor struggled against its powerful pull. She could feel its wetness, its substance. This was no dream; no dream could be so tactile! Her heels pivoted on the icy ground. She quickly lost leverage. It was winning! It was dragging her to the mouth of destruction! She clenched her eyes shut. With one last effort, she tried to wrench herself free of its grip, but she slipped on the ice and began to fall to the frozen earth.

She crashed face-first into the hardwood floor of her foyer.

Dr. Droma stumbled to her feet. She tasted blood on her lower lip and felt its hot metallic touch in her nostrils. Her coat sagged, sopping wet, on only one arm. Her front door stood closed and locked behind her. She must have staggered in and fallen to the floor, utterly exhausted. She felt exhausted, for certain.

Exhausted, but not sleepy. Not after that. Dr. Droma lowered her aching body into the nearest chair, and awaited the red rays of the dawn.

 

* * *

The following night, and the night after, and the night after that, Dr. Droma’s nightmare incubated. It would rise up at steadily less expected moments – as she prepared dinner, as she washed her hands and face in the morning, as she entered the sanatorium – and each successive time it seemed to grow more intense, more real. The dark presence behind her would ensnare her by the leg or arm or waist, coming closer to its goal of dragging her away, and she would awaken from the dream later and later, having endured a longer encounter with the black entity. She worried it would win out in the end. Her only defense was to defer sleep, keeping herself awake by any means she could find.

After a fourth sleepless night Dr. Droma began seeing things. The earliest hallucinations were comparatively benign, if disconcerting. Shadows on the periphery of her vision seemed to move of their own accord, slithering and dancing and twirling until she peered directly at them, at which point they either halted or vanished. Notes she scrawled throughout the day coiled back into her pencil as she slid along the page. Rewriting the slippery words three or four or nine times until they finally adhered to the paper, she would later return to find dozens of indecipherable sentences heaped atop one another. When the hour came to check on Priscilla Reed, Dr. Droma feared to look in the observation mirror, lest she glimpse her own faint reflection and see what mischief it wanted to play on her. She relegated monitoring duties to Sharve, grateful for her student’s willingness, although the doctor insisted upon maintaining the therapy regimen herself. She would not permit a secretary to transcribe the day’s diary entry for her, even at Sharve’s repeated behest.

“If ever there were an opportune time to go on holiday,” he pleaded, his attentions diverted for a time from the girl behind the mirror, “surely now is the most advisable one!”

“I will be taking no leave of absence, Mr. Sharve.”

“But look at you! You’re a wreck! Surely Dr. Hetchings, or Dr. Waylan, plus the other interns and myself will be able to care for your patients while you recuperate.”

“Dr. Hetchings and Dr. Waylan have quite enough of their own worries. I doubt either of them would appreciate you volunteering their services without their foreknowledge.”

“Dr. Waylan does know, Doctor. I conferred with him yesterday afternoon.”

Dr. Droma’s pencil snapped at the tip, but still she chiseled at her clipboard.

“Doctor? I said I spoke with . . .”

“I heard you, Mr. Sharve. My answer remains the negative.”

“But . . .”

“What of the patient? Is she acting any differently?”

“The orderlies have noted that she is extremely polite with them, despite appearing quite lucid. None of her former recalcitrance, or idiot pliancy. And I myself have not seen a single outburst since her last.”

“That may well be only fatigue keeping her from lashing out at our staff.” The doctor swooned, and briefly lost her balance. She steadied herself with a backward step. Unsure whether she had managed it quickly enough to evade detection, she continued her interview. “Has she slept?”

“No,” said Sharve, in a tone she placed halfway between reluctance and disappointment. “Not yet, no.”

“Yes. Well.” Dr. Droma sheathed her broken pencil. She looked him in the eye, but could not tell whether he was swaying, or whether she did. He could use some encouragement either way, she reasoned. Praise is one manner of flirtation. “Results may not be far off, you know. We have not been at it much more than a week, after all. So . . .”

Her vision swam, and Dr. Droma toppled forward. Sharve lunged. She landed in his arms. Her clipboard fell from her limp grip and clattered to the floor.

“Orderly!” Sharve cried. “Bring some water, at the double! Doctor? Doctor, are you quite alright? Say something!”

“Robert,” she murmured, fighting her tiredness, “don’t let me fall asleep.”

“But it seems you need it. Look, here’s a glass of water. Thank you, Johnathan. You can take a nap after after you drink . . .”

“Don’t let me sleep!” she yelled. “It will be the death of me!”

“Pushing yourself needlessly like this more likely will be,” said Sharve. “Please, at least drink some water, Dr. Droma.”

She sipped at the glass, and let Sharve and the orderly place her in a chair. Then Sharve dismissed the orderly with a gracious nod. At that moment, Dr. Droma grew aware that only she and Mr. Sharve remained in the room, and for once she was the sole object of his attentions.

“You worry me, Doctor. Truly, you do. You may have persuaded the rest of the staff that you’re fine, but not me. I know you too well. I see you every day, which they do not. And I notice things.”

“Do you now,” she said in wonderment. “About me.”

“Yes. I do. And I see enough to know you aren’t well.”

“You notice things about me.”

“I’ve seen you write an entire session’s worth of notes on a single line of paper. I’ve seen you puncture your notebook six or seven times before you even start recording, since you’re in too great a daze to know how hard to press down on your pen. And moments ago you attempted to write using a broken pencil!”

“You actually saw that?”

“I think you may need some help, Doctor. What keeps you awake?”

“Nightmares,” she said.

“I see.” He knelt to see her at eye level. “Perhaps company would make them less terrifying. Should I spend the night with you?”

Her heart skipped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh! Ah. Not . . .” he stammered, as a hot creeping red stained his face and ears. “I apologize! No insouciance meant, Dr. Droma. I thought . . . If you would not find it forthcoming, to spend a night by your side. To help you dispel the nightmares. Company helps, sometimes.”

“Oh. Of course.” She also flushed. “Yes. Well. I could . . . I would be amenable to that, I think. Yes.”

“Only to keep you company.”

“Do not worry yourself, Sharve. I take no offense.” She sensed an opening, and decided to test it. “My house is in no condition to receive guests, however. Might we use yours?”

“Mine? Certainly, Doctor. It may not be as luxurious as what you are accustomed to, naturally, but . . .”

“No matter,” she said. “I will not complain.”

“Splendid!” His face grew luminous. She had seen that luminosity before, elsewhere. “I shall guide your thither after our time here ends. Speaking of which,” he said, turning to the mirror, “should I take over Ms. Reed’s routine today?”

“No thank you, Mr. Sharve,” said Dr. Droma. “I feel rather well enough all of a sudden to keep every one of my day’s appointments.”

 

* * *

He was busy apologizing for something, but in her addled state she could barely decipher it. Something about lacking any good wine to offer her, and having only a cheap tea that nobody else he had met before fancied. She could hardly be bothered. That beef dish Sharve had earlier served for dinner, although quite agreeable, left her feeling drowsy. In sedate contentment, she nodded at his gibberish.

“With pleasure, Doctor,” said Sharve. “Sit tight. I’ll go brew us a pot.”

She heard the slow hiss of a stove burner from the kitchen. Her eyelids weighed heavily, but she kept her eyes wide open surveying Sharve’s modest abode. He lived alone, but nonetheless displayed at least a modicum of good taste. His crowded bookshelves were placed so as to be functional, rather than ostentatious, and his furniture – an armchair and the couch on which she reclined – showed an equal concern for appearance as they did for comfort. It seemed he lived well, if not richly.

Dr. Droma reclined her head on the couch’s plush backing. Her vision blurred. Of all the times to end up at Sharve’s house, this had to be the one, this moment of febrile weakness! She could scarcely tell whether the insomnia left her reeling, or whether she merely felt intoxicated from being immersed all at once in his native environment.

But of course this should be the moment he let her in! Her guard was down. She did not appear strong, but frail and girlish. She should have known better. Men like him always want someone weaker than themselves, to feel more powerful by comparison. A damsel in distress. Like that girl. What could seem more feminine than to be in need of help?

So that was his game. He liked weak women. That meant she could do nothing directly. She would have to tease feelings out of him, make them seem to him like his own ideas. Exactly like therapy. Come now, she chided. This should be easy for you. Resurrect those feminine wiles. It has been some time, but they are still there, somewhere. But be sure not to fall asleep, whatever you do!

A whistle sounded. Sharve returned carrying a tray, on which a silverish teapot, a box of tea leaves, and two bland white cups sat. He pulled from his breast pocket two tea diffusers, and set everything down on the table by the doctor’s knees.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Doctor.”

The words on the box melted as she stared at them. She blinked, and they congealed back into letters. She shook her head.

“No trouble at all, Robert.”

“You seldom call me Robert.”

“Yes. Well. Rarely do we see one another outside of work. Here I think we may dispense with those formal, unnecessary titles.”

“As you wish.” He stared at his empty cup, and he began to flush. “But I’m afraid I don’t know your given name.”

“You . . . don’t?”

“No. I’ve never heard it used before.”

It was a small remark, but it cut her like paper. She ruminated over her empty cup, long enough to suggest that she had perhaps forgotten the name for herself.

“It is Collette,” she said. “Call me Collette.”

“Collette,” he repeated. Was he savoring it? “Collette. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Well, it is . . . It is not something you would guess, I guess – I suppose.”

Rather than blunder further, she occupied herself packing tea leaves into her diffuser’s shallow dish. Sharve did the same with his. He cleared his throat.

“I won’t be offended if you find the tea distasteful. I may be the only man in western Europe who enjoys it.”

“You may remain so even if I like it. I am no man.”

Caught off-guard, he averted his eyes.

“Right. So you aren’t.”

Having failed to make him crack a smile, she tried a different approach.

“What did you have planned for us this evening? I have to ask – we are in your territory, after all.” She began to sprawl with as much elegance as she could muster, hoping to impress upon him that womanly image she imagined he sought. “I am in no position to plan or demand or decide.”

“It’s late. Aren’t you tired?”

“No!” Then, reigning herself in, “No.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor. I’d find nothing impolite in it if you fell asleep.”

“Collette.”

“Collette. I’ve a bed upstairs you can use. I will stay down here tonight.”

“That will not be necessary, Robert.”

“What, you want company?”

“No.” How tempting! “I mean that I will have no need for a bed.”

“So you say.” He sipped at his teacup. “Hmm. Not quite potent enough yet.”

She felt the need to do the same. The tea had a sharp, sour flavor, but it did not strike her as entirely repulsive. The aftertaste, however, was like some combination of chamomile and charcoal.

“It is . . . a unique blend,” she said.

“Does that make me a man of unique taste?”

She laughed, more loudly than she intended. So her impulse control was not wholly intact when deprived of sleep! She tried not to spill her cup. But he was smiling! At her? Or only at his successful jest?

“Why, certainly,” she said, “if not a man of taste. Perhaps even refined taste, if we wish to be particular.”

“You flatter me, Collette.”

“Nonsense. It is flattery only if it is insincere.” She watched the shapes his lips made while sipping at his teacup. “I have often been curious to know what sort of things strike the fancy of a man of taste. That was my first and most ardent love, you know – the behavior and laws of appeal and attraction.”

“Any reason why?”

“I cannot say exactly.” She swallowed a mouthful of tea, hoping that the heat or some chemical would help rouse her. “It must have been my environment. Often the most influential factor, as well you know.”

She recalled her environment vividly – the face of every boy from her schoolgirl days who never thought to look her way; the frustration and confusion that came with trying to deduce why other girls received glances or conversations or more. It was a puzzle she fervently desired to solve. But what a poor story that would make! She improvised a less shameful cover.

“I do remember my grandfather once remarking that love was temporary insanity,” she said. “It stuck with me. I could not stop wondering, if it truly were insanity, why so many rational people succumbed to it, why so much of art and culture devoted itself to it.”

“But you went into psychotherapy?”

“Yes. Well. Sometimes we are not at all gifted in what we most wish we were.”

She took a large gulp of the bitter tea.

“Should it prove any consolation,” said Sharve, “I think you’re a brilliant therapist. It’s what first attracted me.”

The doctor nearly dropped her cup.

“Oh! Ah. Forgive me. I meant no impudence.” He drank most of his tea at a single go. “To the sanatorium, I mean. To your tutelage.”

Dr. Droma sank into the couch. No, she thought, of course not. Stupid of you to hope.

“Collette! Are you feeling well?”

“I will be fine, Sharve. Sometimes I manage.”

She placed her shaking teacup on the table, and then reclined as deeply into the couch as the cushions would allow her. It was all too much! Life was no reprieve from sleep, and sleep no refuge from life. No wonder that Reed girl had tried to fling herself from a rooftop . . .

He planted himself beside her.

“You manage admirably,” he said. “Please, don’t look so distraught.”

“I apologize.”

“No need, no need. You don’t have to say anything.”

With a miserable expression, she turned her fatigue-moistened eyes toward his.

“Is there really nothing there, Robert?”

She felt faint, and sensed she was about to fall on her side. She could not stop it. She toppled over, right into his arms. He cradled her, and neither made any effort to pull away.

“I feel like such a fool.”

“You aren’t,” he whispered. “You’re far from one.”

She inhaled the scent of his cologne, and her body relaxed. Part of her sounded an alarm, but the other part did not care. Her eyelids drooped.

“Robert,” she said, “remember, don’t let me fall asleep.”

“Hush. We’ll talk later.”

“Robert, I’m serious.”

Her eyes closed, but she forced them back open as quickly as she could. He gazed down at her with a serene, benevolent expression. Her mind clamored for her to resist, but her body’s soporific impulses were winning.

“I know you think you do me a favor,” she said, “but you must not . . .”

“Ssh. It’s alright. I’m here.”

“Robert!” she yelled.

Her outcry echoed against the cold walls of a long corridor lit in dim blue.

Panic hit her hard. Each breath felt molten in her lungs, and her frantic heart labored as if churning sludge. She tried to lean against a wall to steady herself, but it seemed to shrink away as she neared it. She stumbled.

“You cannot be here,” she told herself. “Wake up! Wake up!”

The first of the carnage soared overhead, familiar as recent history to her now. She hoped something would strike her and rouse her from sleep. No sooner had she formed the thought than did a jagged slab of cupric slag gash her shoulder. The pain tore through her, as real as any sensation she ever had. Regardless, she did not return to Sharve’s room.

“Wake up, damn you!”

Thinking she might take control of the dream, she attempted to conjure a door that would let her escape. It did not materialize. Her throbbing shoulder felt too real. She could not convince her mind that she was in an illusion. What kind of dream was this, that could resist its own dreamer? As she pondered, the accrued debris reminded her of what was to come. The dark presence would soon arrive. Her panic coagulated into fear, and she felt her blood freeze with it.

“Whatever happens,” she said, “do not look at it. Not under any circumstances.”

A black tentacle landed on her uncut shoulder with a viscid smack.

“Fight it! Come on!”

She wrenched to one side, but the dense, inky appendage wrapped more tightly about her.

“Fight it!”

The doctor hurled her weight ahead, pulling against the tentacle like a yoked ox. She planted one foot, then the other. Her spirits lifted until she heard the quiet shuffle of sole on stone, and realized that the blackness was dragging her backward. She redoubled her pace. Two more inky tentacles shot from behind her and splatted on the ground. They slid back, hissing like punctured pipelines, before lashing around her ankles. Entangled, she fell forward, but the tentacle about her shoulder hefted her into the air with a tug.

She whimpered as she glanced down to find herself suspended in midair. Debris flew all around her like wind-whipped snow. Stone, wood, bronze, iron, steel – the building blocks of the ages – were tossed to and fro as if they were weightless. It looked as though entire houses flew by her, until it occurred to her that they were severed pieces of buildings larger than any she had ever seen. Where was this place? And when? The floor below began to turn, and she grew aware that the tentacles were rotating her, facing her toward the source of the chaos.

“Do not look, whatever you do . . .”

The blue glow shone so brightly that it drowned everything from sight save her black shackles. A low hum reverberated in her ears, and grew in volume as the blue light burned more and more intensely. Her eyes traced the tentacle around her legs, tempted by a grim curiosity concerning what guided them. She came to her senses in a split-second, however, and slammed her eyes shut.

“I will not look,” she said.

She felt the cool wet slap of another tentacle gripping her unfettered wrist, and then a pressure on all sides as her various restraints pulled in different directions. She screamed, but refused to open her eyes. She clenched them even more tightly as her shoulder wound widened, and her arm split from her body as a doll breaks at it seams. Tears forced their way out from between her eyelashes, for she felt each agonizing moment in full.

“I will not!”

One of her legs detached next. She felt herself dangle a bit more freely, but another tentacle seized her about the waist to compensate. She writhed in pain. She thought she would faint from it, but remained all too conscious. Her other limbs were plucked from her body like feathers from a bird. The hum grew deafening.

“You can’t make me!” she yelled, her defiant tone as scalding as acid in her throat.

She felt a cold viscous something splash through the tears on her cheeks. It seemed to flow against them, snaking between her lashes and billowing wet and cold against her covered eye. The same feeling spread across her other eye. Her breath came in short spasmodic bursts.

Then it escaped as one protracted howl when the chill fanned out and yanked her eyelids, absconding with them into the light and sound.

For the briefest of moments, she saw spread out before her the full reach of infinity. She had only begun to process its first ruinous fraction when a fissure erupted in her consciousness, and instantly spiderwebbed through all the rest of her.

 

* * *

Robert Sharve sat on a wooden stool and drained the last of his drink. He set the empty glass down on the counter beside a half-dozen identical vessels. He motioned to the barkeep for another. The man behind the counter hesitated, but Sharve’s companion nodded in assent. An eighth glass was delivered into Sharve’s waiting hand.

“Are you properly pissed yet?” his friend enquired.

“Not nearly enough.”

His companion swore. “Well, do it faster. You know my heart goes out to you, Bert, but you’re bleeding me dry here!”

“I’m sorry, Gerald.”

“Aw, it’s not important. It takes a lot to forget.”

“More than you can imagine. Two weeks, and I still can’t shake the image. I’ve never seen anything like it. We work with uncounted numbers of crazies from all across England every day, and still nothing compares.”

“Waylan plans to introduce me to a pyrophiliac tomorrow,” said Gerald.

“Couldn’t hold a candle.” Sharve downed his drink. “Picture this. She falls asleep in my arms, so peaceful she looks positively cherubic. And she lays there for all of forty seconds, stiff and silent as a corpse. But then suddenly she shoots upright, like her back is spring-loaded, and shrieks. Longer than an opera glissando.”

“Good lord.”

“She didn’t stop, Gerald. Not to breathe or anything. She kept on, and her voice sounded hollow. Nothing like the usual Droma chirp. Like she wasn’t even there.”

“A chirp? That’s nicer than what I’d call it,” said Gerald. “But then she always liked you best among the trainees. Probably treated you better than the rest of us.”

“That she did. Nobody else would have run my experiment for me.”

Sharve stared into the bottom of his empty glass as Gerald looked on impatiently.

“Well?” asked Gerald. “What happened then?”

“You can imagine I was in no favorable circumstance. Here I was, a young man in his house with a hysterical woman in arms who is busy screaming out her lungs. What would anyone think, hearing that? Nothing good! Well, I tried my hardest to calm her down – a shake, then several shakes, then cries of her name – but still she screamed, even by the time the constabulary arrived. A neighbor must have summoned them. What else does one do when one hears a woman’s prolonged, terrified scream? The lawmen didn’t believe me, you know, when I suggested she’d lost her mind. But they had a lady doctor look her over, and confirm I did nothing ungentlemanly.”

“But doesn’t that test only work if . . . You mean to say Droma never . . . ?”

“Not once.”

“By damn. No wonder she fancied you.”

“It was awful, Gerald. Awful. I thought I had witnessed somebody losing her soul, right there in front of me.”

“Sympathies, Bert.” Gerald swigged from his own vessel.

“Do you know that she imagined she had caught one of our patient’s nightmares? She told me one morning, before things went completely agley. Thought she had contracted it, like a disease. Can you believe it? Communicable nightmares!”

“It sounds unreal to me.” Gerald lowered his glass. “Wait, weren’t you researching nightmares?”

“I was.”

“Guess this means the end of your experiment.”

“It would seem.”

“Dammit,” Gerald spat. “I’m sorry, Bert.”

“So am I. It will be years before we know whether mine is a worthwhile line of enquiry. We may never know.” He paused. “I wonder . . . I wonder whether I am somehow to blame. Whether it had something to do with my method.”

“No more grant, then, either?”

“Not for the method,” said Sharve. He laughed acerbically. “Hetchings says I can publish on Droma’s condition. He claims I’ve discovered a new disorder. I can virtually write my own grant checks now. And my doctorate is guaranteed from all my research into her.”

“She’s still your ticket to accreditation, huh?” asked Gerald.

“Quite.” Sharve set his eighth empty glass on the counter. “All I need to do to help orient myself is to read her notes on the Reed case.”

He unbuttoned his vest, and removed from an inner pocket Dr. Droma’s case notebook. He rifled through the pages with his thumb. When Gerald showed no particular interest, Sharve returned it to his vest.

“Waylan suggested she’s cured, by the way,” said Gerald. “The Reed girl. I heard it this afternoon, while you were off watching Droma. She’ll be released within the week, I bet.”

“And we’ll never know whether I cured her.” He slammed his fists on the counter. “To hell with it!”

“That’s the spirit! Say, Bert, you already sound more alive. Let’s pack it up.”

“You’re not finished yet.”

“Sure I am. Not all of us are so lucky with their grant proposals. My wallet says I’m done, and it’s hoping you are, too!”

“Then I guess we’re finished here,” said Sharve.

Gerald passed the barkeep a handful of bills through the cadre of empty glasses. The two men stepped out of the tavern. The sun hung low in the orange sky. Sharve sighed. Gerald laid a hand on Sharve’s shoulder.

“You really cared for her, didn’t you?” asked Gerald.

“Which one?” Sharve placed a hand over the pocket that held the notebook. “Maybe. I don’t know whether I did. What does it matter? I’ll never see either of them again. Better to forget them if I can.”

“Yeah. That’s for the best.”

They stood in the dim light of the setting sun.

“Before I go,” said Gerald, “any chance I might . . . work with you?”

“On the grants.”

“Yeah. If you’re willing.”

Sharve slid his hand over his eyes. Sighing, he rubbed them. Gerald, unblinking, watched.

“I’ll look into it,” said Sharve.

“Many thanks, Bert.”

The shadow of a passing zeppelin engulfed them. Sharve turned his gaze skyward to see the machine leave trails of vapor as it drifted slowly by, like a whale in the ocean.

“Sometimes,” said Sharve, “I wonder whether we do good work. Whether any good can come of reimagining the past.”

“We don’t have to decide one way or the other today,” said Gerald. “We can figure it out tomorrow.”